Sprint's rolling out a new affordable 7 inch Android tablet, the ZTE Opik, and honestly it's a solid tablet for the money. The Optik sells for $99 with a 2 year contract and $349 without contract. That doesn't mean the specs are bargain basement: it has a sharp 1280 x 800 capacitive touchscreen with good viewing angles that's great for eBook reading, and a 1.2GHz dual core Qualcomm Snapdragon CPU with a gig of RAM and 16 gigs of storage.

The Optik runs Android 3.2 Honeycomb with very little UI customization. No word on whether it will get Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. This is a 3G EV-DO Rev. A tablet with WiFi. Sprint has said they won't be rolling out further WiMAX devices this year, since they plan to transition to LTE for their 4G services. As you'd guess, data speeds aren't blazing on Sprint's 3G network, but it's certainly better than no data at all when you're not near a WiFi hotspot.

The 0.45" thick, 14 ounce tablet looks chunkier than it is. There are no slimming lines here, but we do like the rubberized handgrips on the back. The tablet has front and rear cameras, a GPS, microSD card slot and Bluetooth but no HDMI port. It's available now.